Obama Slashes Funding For Yucca Mountain

It appears as though Barack Obama has no love for the nuclear industry:

AP: President Barack Obama is taking the first step toward blocking a nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain by slashing money for the program in his first budget, according to congressional sources.

Obama's budget to be announced Thursday will eliminate virtually all funding for the Yucca project with the exception of money needed for license applications submitted last year to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

''The Yucca Mountain program will be scaled back to those costs necessary to answer inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission while the administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear-waste disposal,'' the Energy Department will say as part of the budget document, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the document had not been made public.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who has fought the Yucca dump for years, said Obama's decision to cut funding ''represents our most significant victory to date in our battle to protect Nevada from becoming the country's toxic wasteland.''

The site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been under consideration for a quarter-century, although Nevada officials have argued that the volcanic ridge line is not the most suitable place to store 70,000 tons of reactor waste from commercial power plants.

Obama during his presidential campaign said Yucca Mountain has not been shown to be the best site based on the science, and he promised to review the project.